Ashes
by sable113
Summary: "Sometimes I wish the world would burn away, leaving nothing but ashes." The untold story of Portia, Cinna's fellow stylist and best friend. Please enjoy!
1. Chapter 1

_**I have always wondered what Portia's story is. She seems like she should be an important character, but she is hardly mentioned. This is the story of Portia's life, right up to her death. Enjoy! **_

_**Disclaimer: If I owned**_**The Hunger Games,_ I wouldn't be sitting here writing fanfiction about it_**

Sometimes I wish the world would burn away, leaving nothing but ashes.

Seeing Cinna in pain hurts more than my own wounds. He grits his teeth though, and doesn't let them know what they're doing to him. But I know. I've seen him hurt too many times to not know.

We are held in separate cells, but all that really keeps them apart is crosshatched metal bars. I can still talk to him, even hold his hand. I try to distract him from his pain. I tell him stories from when we were children. I sing the same songs my mother sang us. Sometimes I fool myself into thinking that it actually helps. But it doesn't.

Every day is the same, but much, much worse than the last. The Capitol people drag him from his cell. I can't see what they do to him, but I can hear him, screaming. Sometimes it's just too much, and I try to block out the horrible, inhuman sound with my hands, but it doesn't go away.

I remember him warning me, before the Quell. I had no idea there was a rebellion being planned, but he knew. Of course he knew. I remember him looking me straight in the eyes and telling me, in his slow, calm way, that he was in danger. "If something happens to me," he told me, "you have to disappear. They'll come after you next."

I didn't understand then, but I do now. Cinna knows too much. They're trying to get the information out of him, but he won't talk. And each day he is thrown back into his cell, even worse than the day before.


	2. Chapter 2

Despite the years that have passed, I still remember the day I first met Cinna. We were only five years old, and we both lived in District 1.

My mother was a seamstress, and we were very poor. My father had died a week before I was born in a factory explosion. We lived in the wealthiest district in Panem, but we were almost always starving.

I was searching for scraps of food in our neighbor's large, metal trash can. I had to climb up on top of a crate just to look inside, but when I took of the lid, there wasn't any food at all. There was a boy, staring at me with gold-flecked green eyes. Cinna.

His mother had died recently, and it was just he and his father struggling to get by. They were as poor as us. We became best friends.

I was taller than him; faster and stronger too. But it was clear right away that he was smarter. We trained as Careers, of course, as all children in District 1 do, but neither of us ever had any desire to compete in the Hunger Games. As a matter of fact, we agreed from a very young age that we detested watching them. The only part of it Cinna liked was the tributes' costumes. He knew from the very beginning that he wanted to be a stylist.

"Someday, Portia, I'm gonna design the best costume in the world!" he said, eight years old, his wide eyes shining. "And everyone in all of Panem is going to stop what they're doing to stare."

We both knew this was an impossible dream, but neither of us said it aloud. We lived in District 1. You had to be from the Capitol to be a stylist.

Those were hard times, but the best times. Neither of our families had money, but Cinna and I had each other. We did everything together; went to school, searched for food, played around the factories, trained as Careers. Even though our stomachs were always empty, I never wanted those times to end.

But, like everything else good in the world, they did.

Cinna's father died the year we turned thirteen. Cinna had no one left in the world but me. My mother and I took him in, but it was so hard to feed another mouth. Slowly, we began to starve to death.

It was then, two months after Cinna's father died, that my mother made a decision. We were moving to the Capitol.

Of course, it was illegal, but those kinds of things didn't stop us. I don't know how she got us in, but she did. We began living in the tiny poor part of the opulent city. My mother continued her work as a seamstress, which was much more popular here in the Capitol than in District 1. Meanwhile, Cinna and I started up our shared dream of becoming stylists.

We started out small, because we were still poor, but thanks to Cinna's obvious skill, we began to become better known. One thing we never did was separate. Although I couldn't compare to his eye for fashion, he wouldn't took any job without me. We rejected the horrible self-alteration of the Capitol. If it was even possible, we became even closer friends.

Then came the year of the 74th Hunger Games. The year that Cinna finally got his wish. The year that changed our lives forever.

Cinna surprised me by asking for District 12. I didn't mind, but I asked him why. "Because they're the underdogs," he said. "Just like you and me. If we can make it, maybe they can too."

He told me his idea, which, of course, was absolute brilliance. All that it would depend on was the cooperation of the tributes. But the two of them, Katniss and Peeta, went along with it. I could tell they were scared, but they played their part well.

And Cinna turned Katniss into the girl on fire, the face of the rebellion.

After the games, Cinna became distanced from me. I didn't know it at the time, but he was working with Plutarch Heavensbee, Haymitch Abernathy, and all the other instigators of the rebellion. Even years before the Quarter Quell, they had been planning it. It was their moment.

I wish he had told me. I could have helped him. But I think I know why he didn't. If it were me, I wouldn't want him to get the slump of the shoulders, the tired, worried look that I so often saw in his eyes. I would have wanted to protect him. Like he did for me.

He didn't tell me about the mockingjay dress he made from Katniss's wedding dress. I was so scared for him, finally realizing that something was wrong, that he was going to suffer for what he did. He warned me of the danger both of us were in, the night before the Quell started. And that was the last time I saw him before they took him away.

I should have run. I could have. But I was too scared. Cinna was always so much braver than me.

They came and took me away barely hours after the Games started. The prep team too. They locked us in dark, cold cells. They tortured me.

It didn't take long for them to realize that I knew nothing. But Cinna on the other hand…he knew. They tried to get information out of him, but he would never tell.

I was in my cell a whole day before I saw him. I had thought he was dead. But they threw him into the cell next to mine. He was unconscious, too far away for me to touch. But I wept, I called his name, I reached for him until he woke up and looked at me with those same beautiful green eyes that I saw all those years ago peering at me from out of a garbage can.


	3. Chapter 3

The days drag on. Every hour is torture, every minute its own form of living hell. I hate to see Cinna so broken. He isn't the same boy I knew all those years anymore. It hurts for him to move, to speak, to breathe. No matter what I do, I just can't help him. The Capitol is too powerful.

Weeks and weeks pass. Sometimes Cinna and I don't speak for days at a time. I wish I could tell him that everything's going to be okay. But I know it's not.

Then one horrible day, Cinna doesn't come back. I wait and wait, a horrible feeling rising in my stomach. Finally I drag myself to the door of my cell, press my face against the bars, and look for someone to ask. A guard passes, but he ignores my anxious questions. Hours of this pass. I become more and more desperate, banging on the door whenever someone passes by, screaming at them. _Where is he? Where's Cinna?_

Two days alone. Cinna doesn't come back, and I find myself crying out his name when I sleep. Then finally someone comes to my cell.

I shrink away when I see him. I know this man. He is the one orchestrates the tortures. I don't know his name, but his cruel face is all too familiar.

He just glances at me contemptuously, as if I am a filthy dog too far beneath him to notice. Then he orders two guards to bring me along. I am too weak to stand, much less struggle, so the guards practically have to drag me down the long, dark hallway behind the man.

I want to demand he tell me where Cinna is. I try to use my most defiant voice, but all that comes out is a squeak. "What did you do to him?"

The torture man doesn't even look at me. "The stylist? He's dead."

Any strength that's left in my body disappears. I gasp, feeling like I just got punched hard in the stomach. There's no breath in my lungs. Cinna dead. My best friend gone. I want to curl up and disappear from the world, this cruel, cruel world where Cinna doesn't exist anymore. I'm too numb even to cry.

The hallway seems to go on forever. "Where are you taking me?" I croak, but the man either doesn't hear me or chooses not to reply.

Memories flash through my mind. Cinna laughing as I chase him down the streets of District 1. Cinna scowling when I beat him during Career training. The look of joy on his face when he designs clothes. The worry that haunted his eyes the last few months. Cinna. Alive.

And then the tears come. Horrible, choking sobs that rack my body and make my throat hurt. The salt burns my cheeks. The guards and the torture man ignore me. They drag me into a tiny white room and lock the door.

I curl up, my head buried in my knees, not even trying to stop the tears. I can see Cinna's face in my mind, so clear it is as if he is right in front of me. How I wish I could just stop, so that I could join him!

I'm not very aware of the time that passes, but it isn't long before the door of my little room opens up and a pair of Peacekeepers hauls me to my feet. Somehow, I feel stronger now, and I am able to take small steps. Cinna is dead; what more can they do to me? They've already done their worst.

There's a strange roaring sound coming from the end of the hallway. What is it? I don't have strength left to wonder.

We reach the tall white door – the Peacekeepers and I – and I stare at it. A gloved hand turns the handle and opens it.

The roaring is from an audience. It seems like the whole Capitol is here, gathered in the stands around a circular arena. Someone shoves me out into the open, and the noise swells. Their hatred pounds me like rain, threatening to crush me under its weight.

In the center of the circular area stands President Snow and two armed Peacekeepers. Their guns are held diagonally across their chests, black against white.

The Peacekeepers that brought me here propel me forward, toward the waiting president and the two guards. I am stopped right in front of them and forced to kneel. My hands are tied behind my back and my head shoved down into a submissive bow.

President Snow speaks, his voice magnified, booming over the noise of the crowd. "People of Panem, welcome! You are here to witness the eradication of a criminal and known member of the rebellion. Creatures like this must be stamped out before their disease can be spread throughout the masses…"

He continues, but I don't hear him anymore.

So that's it. They're going to kill me like an animal.

For some odd reason, I'm not scared. I'm sad, I suppose. I would have liked to see my mother again, and it's terrible that she has to see me go like this. But I've served my purpose in this world. I always knew that this day would come. Maybe I didn't know that I would be executed on television broadcasted to the whole country, but somehow I suspected that I wouldn't be the kind to die quietly in my sleep.

"…you are here to see the ending of the darkness that their kind has spread over our magnificent nation!" Snow is saying. "Rejoice, citizens of Panem, for a new dawn is coming, and the day that follows will be one of bright and glorious opportunities."

The Peacekeepers – or the firing squad, as I suppose they are – are lining up. There's no use in trying to escape. There's no way out, and nowhere to go anyway. All I can do is watch as the two Peacekeepers load their guns and point them at me.

**Okay, so in the book it said that Portia was executed along with Peeta's prep team, but I didn't feel like working them in here. Please accept my most humble apologies.**


	4. Chapter 4

I remember a conversation Cinna and I once had.

It was before the Quarter Quell, before the warning he gave me. He had told me to come to his apartment to plan Katniss and Peeta's outfits for the upcoming Games. Apparently, all that consisted of doing was sitting in front of the fireplace and watching it for hours.

We had been sitting there for a very long time already, so that every time I blinked an image of the coals remained imprinted on my eyelids. Cinna sighed deeply and shifted in his chair.

"Why do they do it, Portia?" he asked quietly. He seemed to realize that this needed some elaboration, so he said, "The Games, I mean."

"You know why," I said. "To show the districts that they don't have any power."

"I know why," he said, the exasperation in his voice not directed at me. "But _why?_"

He was looking at me, desperate for answers. The firelight turned his eyes gold. I could only shake my head.

"Do you ever wish," he said slowly, hesitating, "that you could change things? Make them better?"

"You shouldn't be saying that," I said automatically. I had spent the years since moving to the Capitol trying to block out any thought that might be considered even slightly rebellious.

"But doesn't it make you angry?" Cinna asked, his voice rising in frustration. I rarely saw him this passionate about anything. "This injustice! It has to stop. The Capitol is using us as pawns; manipulating us in their games."

"Cinna!" I said, surprised. "What's wrong with you? You can't just go around saying those kinds of things."

He snorted derisively and went back to staring into the fireplace. "You're one of them now, too, are you?"

"I'm _not_ just a piece in their games," I said forcefully. "But you have to be careful."

He didn't reply, and a silence fell that was not broken for the rest of the night.

It was only a moment, but I remember it now, seconds from death. Cinna was right. For a while, I did become one of them; doing whatever they told me to do with my head bowed.

"I'm sorry, Cinna," I whisper, although he's already gone. "I failed you."

The guns fire.

The darkness engulfs me and I'm drowning. I want to cry out, but I can't. All I want is for it to end.

Then a hand touches mine and the pain disappears. I look up and see a pair of familiar green eyes and a warm, welcoming smile.

He pulls me out of the darkness, and says, "You never failed."

**The End.**


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